Hi Cliff & Kip,
Cliff Reiter wrote; "I respect anyone’s choice of adding a layer so
student’s have a minimal amount of J to learn ". Kip Murray wrote: "My take
is that J is a valuable tool, and students should begin to learn how to use
it."
There is a misunderstanding here. I am not interested at this point in
university students learning J. Both of you demonstrate very clearly that a
professor with a sound knowledge of J can use J very effectively in the
classroom. At this point I am interested solely in attracting teachers and
professors to learn J. Then they can do what you do.
I am not certain exactly how many university and college professors in
the States know and use J for teaching. As a rough guess, I would suggest
that there must be more than 10,000 and less than 100,000 professors of
Mathematics and disciplines that use Mathematics, such as Engineering,
Science, etc. So we know the potential scale. I would also suggest also that
less than 1% probably use J as you do. When you come to primary and
secondary school use, the number of teachers is much larger - maybe more
than 5 million - and the proportion using J in the classroom is much less.
There is a huge potential market. I would venture to suggest that the number
of people who use a Ken Iverson language is less than it was 30 years ago,
not more. Surely something's wrong?
I am not suggesting that we can account for this lack of growth by
pointing the finger solely at tacit programming. But use won't expand
without a change to it.
Don Watson
----- Original Message -----
> Kip Murray wrote:
>> J's "right to left evaluation" is a problem for students who know (and
>> _should_ know) the Algebraic Operating System of TI calculators. I
>> wrote an introductory lab How J Works (for university calculus students)
>> whose closing panel is shown below. Cliff Reiter, could you share your
>> practical experience?
>
> Kip offers some good. As per his request:
>
> I was asked to comment on my practical experience with teaching using J.
> I respect anyone’s choice of adding a layer so student’s have a minimal
> amount of J to learn and have done that by providing various scripts to
> my students. Still, in general my view is that it is pretty much
> unnecessary and “let language designers design languages” and “let
> teachers teach”; however it is useful if they talk to each other, as for
> example, in this thread.
>
> I teach 3 college level math classes where I use J as a substantial
> resource:
> Linear Algebra (mostly for engineers & econ)
> Number Theory (math, cs and engineers)
> Math Visualization (math, cs engineers using my Fractals Visualization
> and J 3rd ed. text)
>
> In none of the courses do I find students have some particular
> conceptual problem with the flow of the language. Yes, from time to time
> they mistake parsing rules. Each class includes some very short drill. I
> use short auxiliary functions and scripts to offer environments where
> students can explore the mathematical questions of interest. I use both
> tacit and explicit definitions. Typical format is a several page paper
> “lab” that leads students through experiments and asks them to interpret
> the mathematical results. 90% of the questions are routine in the sense
> that they require experiments that only change data; but occasionally
> the student must put together a couple of previous ideas to assemble aJ
> experiment that leads to an answer.
>
> In linear algebra, I focus on the math concepts and do not worry if a
> student does not understand the first line of
>
> A=: ".;._2]0 : 0
> 1 2 3 4
> 0 0 1 2
> 0 0 0 0
> )
>
> for matrix input, for example. I am more interested in them interpreting
> the meaning of the solution of a linear system or what the eigenvalues
> mean in a given context.
>
> In Number theory, I wouldn’t use that matrix input scheme, and but I
> would expect my students to pretty much understand any of the J that I
> use. I have taught a mincourse at the national meetings on this and most
> of the adult students (professors) can’t absorb the J fast enough to
> appreciate the learning environment the student will find. The students,
> who are young and resilient, but also use the J for an hour every week
> or two have more time to assimilate and have much less difficulty with
> the language. There is little frustration and a few students manage to
> develop J skill to a creative level by course end.
>
> In the math visualization course, my book provides the main template for
> in class experiments. I do discuss J syntax in detail as needed, and the
> students struggle with that abstraction (but have little trouble with
> the template experiments) and soon enough they are doing very creative
> work far beyond the book template. Even toward the end of the course,
> many students have a sense of frustration that they don’t have complete
> mastery of J. If I was teaching J, perhaps that makes me a failure. On
> the other hand, the frustration might merely be typical of what students
> feel in any course where they learn a tremendous amount of new ideas.
> Moreover, I am teaching visualization and if students are learning about
> that and developing creativity, then I am happy to call it a double
> success.
>
> I would encourage development of gentle exercises that simply use J to
> illustrate the math of interest.
>
> --
> Clifford A. Reiter
> Mathematics Department, Lafayette College
> Easton, PA 18042 USA, 610-330-5277
> http://www.lafayette.edu/~reiterc
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
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For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
